IC5146 - Cocoon Nebula RGB (synthetic green)

[GordonH]

Hi

As the moon wasn't rising till late and it was in crescent phase I thought I would have a go at some RGB imaging and I decided on the Cocoon nebula which I have had a couple of goes at in the past. I shot the red data on Saturday and got 4 hours in 10 minute sub frames and just over 4 hours for blue last night again with 10 minute subs. With the light pollution where I live this really was pushing it to the limit but I thiunk the results were worth it. I decded to experiment a bit so I created a synthetic green channel from the red and blue data, this was also partly due to the chance of the weather not playing ball for the next few nights.

After creating the synthetic green channel I followed my usual processing work flow of a couple of iterations of levels followed by several contrast 'S' curves, during this process I "inverse selected" the bright stars so they wouldn't become to bloated and dominant. I then did some colour balancing using Selective colour and a couple of iterations of shadows/highlights to help bring out some of the dust and urrounding nebula. I will still try and get some green data later this week but I was quite pleased with the result so far. This was taken with the FSQ106ED and Starlight Xpress SXVF H9 on a Paramount ME. Just to give an idea of the light pollution where I live, my house is surrounded by other houses and streets on all sides, all my neighbours have bedroom lights which for some reason seem to be on all night, two of the neighbours have security lights which come on frequently during the night. There is an outdoor tennis court a couple of hundred yards down the road with flood lights that stay on till past midnight. There is also a street light 30 yards away that shines into my garden. Please don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to make excuses but I think it is possible to do RGB imaging from light polluted sites if you are prepared to work around it, hopefully this image will reinforce that.

Earlier attempts at this subject can be seen in the image gallery of my website Imaging The Heavens - Home Page

There is also a full size version at the following link IC5146- Cocoon Nebula photo - Gordon Haynes photos at pbase.com

Thanks for looking

Best wishes

Gordon

[Revs]

Looking good Gordon. Interesting idea with the green channel. Good colour and balance and the darker outer regions are showing nicely.

[ollypenrice]

Good result frpm any location and from somewhere as difficult as you describe I can only call it miraculous.

Olly

[Darth Takahashi]

This is a tough object, I pointed a telescope at it briefly and decided to move on quickly to something else. Actually, this and M101 are objects that I intend to come back to with the Newton at F4 when I get it working, that is!!!

Great result from your location in the condition you describe.

[fwm891]

Really great. I must try harder...

Francis

[adamsp123]

A disturbing amount of detail you got! The darker bits of the Nebula look awesome.

[GordonH]

Hi

Thanks for the comments everyone, following some of the comments I decided to reprocess the data and this is what I came up with, the stars are more evident which is to be expected of this region and I have adjusted the colour balance as the nebula was a bit too orange. I still plan on doing the green data when time and weather allows.

Here is a link to the full size version IC5146 - Cocoon Nebula (reprocessed) photo - Gordon Haynes photos at pbase.com

Best wishes

Gordon

[foundaplanet]

Superb..!

I'd vote for the first one.

[Revs]

Agreed, a bit too much high-end brightness in the second IMO. If you would be good enough to post an un-post-processed full res image I'd like to have a play with this one